Nick Saban Terms Quotations

If we don't have an agreement this year, obviously it's going to affect the cap in an adverse way in terms of what's available to spend on players.

Philosophically, I don't there's a lot of difference in terms of what we like to do. His knowledge of the league and being able to define things internally in the organization, so you have everybody on the same page, are probably his greatest assets. That and recognition of what people can do - the strength of players, coaches and people in the organization - and putting them in position where they can have success doing it.

He's played a great role for this team all year. He's been unselfish, he's been a really good team guy and he's been very helpful with a lot of other players in terms of what he's done. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it as an organization based on what he's done and how he's played and how he's overcome a lot. We're real proud of him.

He gives us a dimension out there that nobody else does in terms of his physical presence and toughness. We're happy to have it.

I think it's a little bit about respect in terms of how we play -- how you play physically and how you compete,

We have an idea of how we're going to use him, but we don't have an idea of where he is in terms of how much we'll use him. There's a difference. You try to bring players back role-wise without putting them at risk for injury.

Understanding how important slotting is to top draft picks in terms of who got what . . . and how they fall into place, this is really a timing issue,

Where do we go from here? I think it's important that everybody's responsible for what they can do to make this better. I certainly will be, in terms of my part of it. What we're focused on is how we improve as a team, how we learn from the experience that we had here to day, and how we stay together as a team.

We didn't have, maybe, the precision that we needed at times to get things executed, in terms of the protection, route-running and the decision-making at the quarterback position, so it is not really any one area.

What people do on the field is kind of your calling card in terms of the quality of work. When he was a defensive coordinator at Jacksonville and Pittsburgh, they did some pretty quality work. They had top-line defensive teams. He did it in different situations featuring different types of players. That will be helpful to us.

Everybody that sits in the room on our staff has made a contribution to building that offense. We have built it from the ground up, in terms of the language that we use, and that's not something we want to change for the players.

We've obviously started our research in terms of what the options are going to be for us. One of the goals that we have is to develop the players we have so somebody can be a starter for our organization in the future, or to bring somebody to the organization that has the potential to be a future starter relative to our situation.

Well, he just didn't look comfortable all the time in terms of making decisions ... and that's something that you'd always like to do with your players is make sure you're asking them to do things they're comfortable doing. You play to their strengths.

Sage obviously did a good job when he was in there. That's something that will certainly be evaluated . . . in terms of who goes where.

(Ronnie) wants to do well and he is working hard to do well and you can't always evaluate every situation based on results, in terms of how many yards he is getting a carry and things like that. Some of it is his responsibility, but I think it is a team thing that we all need to improve on, so everybody has a chance to be more successful, including Ronnie Brown.

I'm really pleased for the players. These players have suffered a little bit over the last year or so in terms of things not going so well for them, ... I think that they all wanted to prove something.

This is kind of the beginning of maybe LSU becoming a dominant program in the future of college football, ... It's not really the end in terms of this game here.

It's the trademark of both guys in terms of their endurance and ability to get better as the game goes on. That's something we'd like to continue to utilize in the future if we can.

It's most important that we use caution right now, in terms of trying to keep some of our better players and more experienced players that have impact and leadership ready for the season,

This was probably Ricky's best overall game out there, in terms of him having some space to work in, not only as a runner, but a couple of times as a receiver as well.

I am assuming that every game that we play in our division is pretty significant in terms of the kind of rivalry it represents, ... All of the lectures that I give are about thinking about this game this week and not the history of the series, who won in 1947 ... whether we go to Niagara Falls ... because all of that stuff doesn't matter.